Tag Archives: Councillor Paul Ainslie

Be Bold

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It’s the only way to counteract the lethargy of ill-governance.

Boldness is a form of action not reaction. It steps into the void created by a lockdown of thought, a failure of nerve, an acceptance of some misbegotten notion of inevitability. Boldness requires courage.

What we are currently experiencing is the exact opposite. Ours is the Age of the Great Flinching. We flinch in the face of economic uncertainty. We flinch in the face of climate upheaval. We flinch in the face of societal reconfiguration.

We flinch, retreat, retract and call it conservatism.

I do not think that word means what self-described conservatives think it means.

It’s all a regression to the meanness of a previous era. Everyone for themselves. Winner takes all, losers work retail.

There are days when I’m unsure how we as a species ever managed to climb out of the primordial goo and start to evolve. It’s just so hard. I’m good here. Think I’ll just stay put where I am.

The path of least resistance.

So I think it hardly surprising that such an outpouring of interest was sparked by the announcement of One City last week. Hey! Look at that, would you? An idea, many ideas. A forward looking plan that poses substantial questions and tough challenges. Something we can actually sink our teeth into.

Now, much has been made of the plan already so I won’t add to the discussion except to say that, if nothing else, the proposal and the negative reaction to it on the part of the province and from some on council simply made them look tired and unwilling. Disinterested spouses at the tail end of a lifeless marriage. Don’t kick up a fuss. Think of the children.

But I do hope that unenthusiastic reaction does not dissuade other councillors who find themselves in similar positions of power at City Hall – not just in terms of committee chairs but with powers of persuasion – from observing what the TTC Chair and Vice-Chair and councillors Josh Colle and Joe Mihevc actually accomplished. They activated an agenda. Rather than stand pat and let the chips fall where they may, a larger discussion was initiated. If you really want to talk transit, let’s really talk about transit.

I’m looking at the most unlikely of sources to take a flyer on an issue and make a big splash. Ward 43-Scarborough East councillor and Government Management Committee chair, Paul Ainslie. [Phee-ew. I was worried you were talking about Councillor Frank Di Giorgio for a minute there—ed.] Your time is now. Carpe diem.

Councillor Ainslie, you say? I’m not even sure I know which one he is. [Almost always but never quite ever holding the mayor’s hand—ed.] Are you sure you got the right councillor?

As chair of the Government Management Committee, Councillor Ainslie has the opportunity to bring about some important voting, ballot and citizen participatory reforms. He’s been a big supporter of Dave Meslin’s 4th Wall Project which is on display in the lobby of City Hall all next week with an opening reception at 6:30 Monday night. (July 9th). Earlier this year, Councillor Ainslie introduced numerous motions – ranging from using ranked ballots to using video for deputations – for further study.

But as anyone who’s followed voting reform initiatives knows, they can die a frustrating, quiet death by neglect. Those who’ve been elected to office in the traditional manner aren’t always prone to change a system that’s worked for them. Entrenched status quo is not the friend of change in any fashion.

In fact two reform motions actually passed city council unanimously recently, one to establish a working group to study the proposals and another calling for a staff report on a ranked ballot initiative. Yet somehow even these two innocuous seeming items never made it out of the meeting intact and were sent back to staff until October. The slow grinding wheel of change.

The thing is, though, civic awareness and participation has spiked here in Toronto during Mayor Ford’s term. People not only want to be engaged, they have realized the absolute necessity of getting engaged. While it may not be in the best interest of some politicians to have an increase in voter activism, those looking beyond their own self-interest know that it would be in the best interest of our local democracy.

So now, Councillor Paul Ainslie, it’s your time to shine. Use this summer interregnum and the mayor’s disinclination to actually lead as an opportunity to make the case for voter reform. Pull a Stintz, as they say, and step outside the mayor’s circle, that ever decreasing sphere of influence. You’ll have a wide and receptive audience. People want what you have to offer.

Be bold.

It’s this season’s colour.

— humidly submitted by Urban Sophisticat

Who Wouldn’t Want A Casino?

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I joked about this on the Twitter last week. Probably wasn’t the first one. Definitely not the last.

But now it seems to deserve more than the 140 character treatment as, zombie-like, it’s an idea, a dumb idea, a highly unoriginal idea that just won’t die. A waterfront casino cash cow. Ching-ching!

It reminds me of one of my favourite movie lines from one of my favourite 80s movie, Prizzi’s Honor. “If Marxie Heller’s so fucking smart, how come he’s so fucking dead?”

If a casino’s so fucking smart, how come suburban councillors are so fucking dead set against having one in their ward? Never does a council or committee meeting go by when we don’t hear the whine from the likes of councillor Mammoliti or Nunziata or Ford about how downtown gets everything and the suburbs get stiffed. Hey, folks. Here’s your chance. Step right up and claim your casino.

Remember The Great Sheppard Subway Struggle of 2012? Sure you do. Scarborough councillors Ainslie, Berardinetti, Crawford, Del Grande, Kelly and Thompson all demanded that Scarborough residents get what downtown had, subways not no stinkin’ streetcars. They weren’t second class citizens. They deserved first class transit.

Well, where  are they all now? You want something downtown doesn’t have? Here, take the casino. Please. There’s some waterfront out there in your neck of the woods, isn’t there? Stick the casino there, why don’t you.

That's NIMBY not GUMBY

I heard Budget Chief Del Grande on the news this morning, suggesting that the old city of Toronto’s inability to say no is a source of the city’s money woes. Well, here you go, Mr. Budget Chief. Downtown’s finally saying no to a casino. Maybe Ward 39 would like to take it off our hands.

For the casinos biggest supporters, it’s a really good idea in someone else’s ward.

Just like transit planning. As John McGrath wrote about the commissioner of Los Angeles transit, Richard Katz’s seminar yesterday, “…everyone wants a transit solution that other people use.” Or development planning. John tweeted from today’s Toronto-East York Community Council meeting (he’s everywhere, that John McGrath): Councillor [Pam] McConnell, speaking for every deputant against height ever: “This is a beautiful design, for somewhere else.”

Everybody wants the upside — Yeah, whatever. That’s for another post — of a casino, the benefits but none of the headaches. Parking and congestion. Down-and-out gamblers. A Jeff Foxworthy crowd streaming out into the streets, looking for a post-show nosh at a Cracker Barrel.

If I wanted a fucking casino in my neighbourhood, I’d move fucking downtown!

It’s almost as if these councillors all know a casino is little more than a dog and pony show, it’s not really going to contribute much to city’s bottom line but it’s a great way to stick to downtowners. Ohhh, they’re gonna hate this! Like they did tearing up the Jarvis bike lanes, de-fancifying the Fort York bridge and making threatening noises about the Portlands.

In his Metro article today, Matt Elliott pointed out that one of the mayoral campaign platforms of Rob Ford was to give “…more power to local community councils to make neighbourhood decisions.” Instead, we’ve seen a whole lot of imposing their will upon others by Team Ford. Might I suggest that for some of the more vocal, pushy ones, they take a little more time to tend to their own garden, gussy up their own respective wards. That way, perhaps, in the future we won’t have to listen to their bellyaching, complaining how they never get anything.

How about starting with a casino?

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

— generously submitted by Cityslikr

Self-Service Or, You’re On Your Own

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“We set service standards by making budget cuts.”

— Councillor Gord(on) Perks

Or maybe that should’ve read:

“.stuc tegdub gnikam yb sdradnats ecivres tes eW”

In Mayor Rob Ford’s Toronto, we do things all back-asswards like, and call it, ‘Thinking Outside of The Box’ as if nobody’s ever, ever used that phrase before. Cut first and ask questions later. Because everyone knows City Hall is bloated. No one’s even going to notice a 10% cut across the board. That’s just how much fat there is.

So we spend millions of dollars on outside consultants to outline what we’re allowed to cut. We use that as a rationale to cut. Then we go back to the same consultants and ask them to tell us what we should cut. Ooops. Too late. That’s already gone. What’s next on your list?

It’s what’s been called making policy through the budget process. You can’t govern what you don’t have, right? Daycares? Yeah, we did that once, a little while back but… you know, we kind of ran out of money. The province totally screwed us. So we don’t do that anymore. What are you going to do?

Libraries? Yeah, they used to be really popular. People would line up outside some branches before the doors even opened. But for no particular reason, we hacked away some 10% from them and, funnily enough, not as many folks use the facilities as before. Who’dve guessed? There seems to be some co-relation between number of hours open and usage. The numbers are down. Numbers don’t lie. What are you going to do?

As for the TTC? Don’t get me started. Cut back there and people still kept coming. It’s almost as if they needed to use transit or something. But we’ll keep at `er. Delay having that subway built. Hit a few snags unnecessarily burying the Eglinton LRT. Sooner or later people are just going to have to get back into their cars.

What might seem haphazard or maybe even bordering on outright incompetency at first blush, takes on a much darker hue upon closer inspection. A method to the apparent madness. Why risk negative political fallout entering into a full on debate on the council floor about your intentions when you can back door it in a committee room, packed full of your hand picked supporters?

Where once Mayor Ford stood tall, proudly proclaiming his libertarian view of limited government, what it should be in the business of, essentially roads clean, roads safe, now he cowered behind a lacy veil of financial constraint. Financial constraint brought on by his own doing, no less, keeping property tax bumps under the rate of inflation and repealing a tax his very own brother’s 2nd favourite city after Chicago is now about to jostle the province to allow them to institute. Less an ideological warrior prepared to fight and die on the hill of principle and more of a craven, political schemer.

Seriously. If I told them what I was really up to, they’dve never elected me in the first place.

It’s the proverbial death by a 1000 backroom cuts. Never coming out and officially deep sixing anything, nothing that bold. It’s just a slow bleed. We didn’t kill anything. People just kind of lost interest, I guess.

At one point during Tuesday’s 2012 budget wrap up (which really wasn’t because many items got booted to the next meeting on January 9th), Councillor Paul Ainslie strolled into the room. Since he wasn’t a member of the budget committee, he couldn’t introduce an item himself. So fellow Team Ford teammate and budget committee member, Councillor John Parker did his bidding for him.

What bidding was that, you ask? Well, what with all the flurry of proposed cuts happening, arch-conservative Ainslie couldn’t stomach the idea of a pool in his Ward 43 being axed. But to save it from the chopping block, the rule is, you have to offer up an offset, an equal reduction in spending somewhere else, so as to keep the balanced budget in place.

Well, alright then, thinks Councillor Ainslie. Why don’t we just take the money needed to save my pool right out of the city’s Environmental office? Why not indeed. While on the surface such a trade off seems to make absolutely no sense – pool? environment? huh? – to those looking to get the city out of the environment business, it’s so deliciously obvious. An added bonus for Councillor Ainslie as it will help nip in the bud any further talk from the city of that crazy wind power business.

“You will have made the choice not to be able to afford these programs,” Councillor Perks told the budget committee.

That’s the core of the idea of making policy through the budget process. Intentionally drain the coffers, render programs, agencies, departments ill-operational. Kill their ability to function properly. When they no longer are able to adequately serve the public, you can rationalize putting the final nail in the coffin. Why the hell are we putting money into this? It’s not helping anyone. Let’s get rid of it.

Small government by stealth. Keeping your hands clean as you cause increased hardship to those who thought you were in it looking out for the little guy. So with a straight face you can claim you’d love to fund all this stuff. Your hearts bleed for anyone who depends on these services but the fact is, at the end of the day, (it’s always at the end of the day) the money’s just not there. Sorry, folks. Wish we could help.

— record straighteningly submitted by Cityslikr